Platform support for Enterprise Reporting Tool
The reporting tool components should be installable under different platforms like Microsoft Windows platform, IBM AIX and Sun SOLARIS in terms of OS, and it should be able to sit on varied data sources like Data Warehouse and OLAP servers OR any other data source.
Web Server Support
This feature is related to the range of web servers which can support the tool and the connectors over which the tool can work. For example, Crystal can work with MS IIS, Apache, IBM HTTP, iPlanet web server and lotus domino.
Mobile client
One should be able to see the report through a mobile client.
Multi-Layer Support For Enterprise Reporting Architecture
This is a design consideration, when a reporting tool needs to be integrated as part of an overall “business Intelligence platform”. Architecture should be able to provide a multi-layer support. The typically layers (indicative) can be:
Front-end Layer:
This is the front-end which provides common front-end features like user, system administration and browsing. In today’s world, this client layer is based out of the server with the web-based front end.
Process-Management Layer:
This layer is the engine which manages the processes, scheduling, delivery, publishing, security, load balancing etc.
Processing Layer:
This is the data access and processing. This layer is the core processing engine.
As an analogy, if front end layer is the waiter, the process manager is the restaurant manager, and the processing layer is the cook. Every tool provider will be providing a different layout of its architecture, which is generally a different variation of the above three layered architecture.
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